THE CDO / CFO / CEO DISCUSSION:

CEO: Which is more important to the enterprises survival its cash or its data?

CFO: Its Cash

CDO: Without data you do not know what cash you have

CEO: If I wanted to run a free enterprise, I could do it without money, but I could not do it without data.

DATA vs MONEY:

Data is to an Enterprise what air is to the human body, and money is to the Enterprise what water is to the human body. If you have neither you will eventually die, however your company/life will end far quicker without data. As to quality of data, you get sicker faster if the air you breathe is poor quality. However, it is also true that if you have enough water, you may eventually develop immunity to the poor air quality. But, you will always be paying an entirely unnecessary high price, which is something a good CEO can identify as counter-productive to the CFO.

THE BUSINESS CASE:

Removing the flaws that hamper quality data, and effective data flows can increase profits well into the double digits of a company's gross revenue - This may seem impossible, however, when you remove the costs of legal losses, service delivery penalties, wasted rework in salaries, resources and lost opportunities let alone marketing to recover from brand value degradation (all of which are usually directly attributable to poor data quality and flawed data flows) the waste prevention makes its own business case to the CFO.

A GREAT CFO/CEO ONCE TOLD ME:

"I want each of my Execs to be the CDO of their own area of accountability".

I thought this a wise interim mechanism to mature an Executive Committee into the understanding the impact of data flows across their areas and the Enterprise as a whole.

When an Executive Committee understands the headaches involved in managing data from first hand experience they are more likely to: